32 | Reflecting on a Year of Stoicism
How stoicism developed my resilience, technology saves the world, the future of media and more.
Good morning,
This week on Future Talk, Sam and I discuss… nothing. Because of poor timing, we’ve missed a week.
You can catch up with episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts and more.
When I was younger, I was hotheaded. At school, if a classmate angered me, I’d clench my fists and hit them. I couldn’t help it. But as I got older, clenched fists became words, and fights became melodrama. The heat in my head was still there; it only came out differently.
I needed to change something.
Last year, after a break-up, I fell down the rabbit-hole of stoicism. Stoics brush off negative feelings and realize that nothing forces you to feel a certain way. You choose to feel that way. So once you’re in tune with that, and it takes time, anger disappears, and you build mental resilience.
I’ve put it into practice twice this week.
On Monday, I had a senior member of staff at my work lash out at me. Swearing with an aggressive tone, acting intimidating. Old me would be up for a verbal scrap, regardless of seniority. Instead, I let it go and later sent him an email saying he was out of line. He apologized, and it was water under the bridge. Old me would be much worse off.
And on Thursday, I was stood up. Five minutes passed, ten minutes passed, nothing. So I went in by myself and had some quality Italian food. I messaged my friends, and like the good friends they are, they were angry for me. But I wasn’t. It felt weird. Surely I should be angry? Instead, I thought “c’est la vie” and sunk half a bottle of Chianti.
These experiences have made me reflect on my stoic journey. I don’t feel anger anymore (although I would like to channel it sometimes when weightlifting). It’s liberating to no longer feel beholden to my emotions, even if I feel less human because of it.
If I hadn’t discovered stoicism, this week would have made me miserable. Rather than feel that way, I feel resilient because of stoicism.
👀 Recommendations 👀
🖥🌎 Technology Saves the World - Marc Andressen. For Future, VC firm a16z’s new media wing, Marc writes about how technology prevented the impact of Covid from being much worse. Moderna producing a vaccine in two days and two months before Covid became a pandemic. Teams, Slack and Zoom were allowing knowledge workers to work as usual. And streaming giants keeping us entertained.
Future more broadly aims to have a positive spin on technology. But it also represents something more significant. It’s another step in the democratization of media - don’t like the way the New York Times, Guardian, or Washington Post portray technology? Read Future.
📚⛔️ The Fifth Risk - Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis is the author of the Big Short, the book about the 2008 financial crisis turned into a film. It exposed terrifying behaviour within the financial system. The Fifth Risk is even more terrifying. The book tells the story of Trump’s disastrous transition from President-Elect to President. It’s yet another reminder of how reliant the political system is on good faith.
📄👔 The Document Culture of Amazon - Justin Garrison. For a meeting to take place at Amazon, somebody has to write a document. And meeting attendees spend up to thirty minutes, in the beginning, reading the document in silence. This idea is fascinating. I’m a reader, so meetings like this sound like heaven to me. It also results in Amazon having lots of documentation, which makes life easier for new employees or if you’re searching about a particular feature. This piece from Justin is a great insight into how these meetings work at Amazon.
‘I know the person who called the meeting invested their time so they don’t waste mine”
That’s all for this week.
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